Render Markdown to a Formatted PDF

Parses Markdown with marked and renders the result to an A4 PDF. Upload a .md file or paste Markdown straight into the box — headings, lists, tables, code blocks and quotes all come through styled.

About the Markdown to PDF Converter

You can work either way round here. Select a .md or .markdown file, or skip the file picker entirely and paste Markdown into the text area, which suits the common case where what you want as a PDF is a chunk of notes rather than something saved to disk.

The Markdown is parsed into HTML and then rendered to pages at 15 pixel body text. The full common syntax is supported: headings at every level, ordered and unordered lists including nesting, bold and italic, links, block quotes, horizontal rules, fenced code blocks and tables. What you write is what appears, styled sensibly, without you making a single formatting decision.

Key Features

  • File or paste: Accepts .md and .markdown files, or raw Markdown typed directly into the options box with no file needed.
  • Full common syntax: Headings, nested lists, tables, block quotes, fenced code, emphasis and rules are all parsed and rendered.
  • Sensible default styling: Type sizes, spacing and code block treatment are handled for you, so a document looks deliberate without a stylesheet.
  • Tables render as tables: Pipe-delimited Markdown tables come through with their structure intact rather than collapsing into runs of text.
  • Consistent A4 output: Pages are produced at a fixed size and the content flows across as many as it needs.
  • Rendered locally: marked parses and the page is drawn entirely in this tab from libraries on this domain, so notes containing anything private are never sent out to be formatted.

How to Use the Markdown to PDF Converter

  1. Either select a .md file, or paste your Markdown into the box beneath the file area.
  2. Press Convert to PDF.
  3. Wait while the content is parsed and the pages are drawn.
  4. Download the PDF, named after your file, or document.pdf if you pasted.

How It Works

After parsing, the generated HTML is laid out and captured as an image before being written into the PDF. That has one consequence you need to weigh: the text in the finished document is not selectable and cannot be searched, and links appear as styled text rather than working hyperlinks. For something being printed, filed or sent as a fixed record, this is irrelevant. For a reference document people will search inside, it matters — and printing to PDF from a Markdown editor will preserve the text layer where this does not.

A second consequence of the layout being captured in one pass is that pages are divided at fixed intervals with no awareness of content, so a heading can occasionally land at the very bottom of a page or a code block be split across two. Adding a blank line or two around an awkward section usually shifts it.

Images referenced by URL will not appear, because requests to outside hosts are blocked. Syntax highlighting is also absent — code blocks render in a monospaced face without colouring, since no highlighting library is involved.

When You Need It

A developer has written a technical proposal in Markdown, because that is where the work happens, and needs to send it to a finance director who will not accept a file with hashes and asterisks in it. Converting produces something presentable without moving the document into a word processor. Proposals contain pricing and architecture detail, so a conversion that happens locally keeps commercially sensitive material out of an unknown service.

A freelancer drafts client-facing statements of work in Markdown and sends them as PDFs. Doing that conversion in a browser tab rather than through a hosted converter means a document naming the client, the scope and the fee never sits on a third party's disk waiting to be deleted according to a policy they did not write.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Why can I not select the text in the PDF?
The rendered page is captured as an image before being written into the document, so the words are pixels rather than characters. Search and selection will not work, and neither will copy and paste. If you need a searchable result, use your Markdown editor's own export or print-to-PDF, which builds the file differently.
Do my links work in the finished PDF?
No. They are styled to look like links but are part of the page image, so clicking does nothing. Where a link matters, write out the full address in the text so a reader can copy it manually.
My code blocks have no syntax colouring.
Correct — the parser handles Markdown structure but no highlighting library is involved, so fenced code renders in a monospaced face without colour. The indentation, spacing and block styling are all preserved, which keeps code readable even without highlighting.
Images in my Markdown did not appear.
Images referenced by a web address cannot load, because this site blocks requests to outside hosts — the same policy that keeps every tool here from talking to third parties. Embedding an image as a data URI works, since nothing has to be fetched.
Is my Markdown sent anywhere to be converted?
No. marked parses the text in this tab and the page is rendered locally, with both libraries served from this domain rather than fetched from elsewhere. Whether you upload a file or paste a draft contract into the box, the content stays in your browser and the PDF is created in memory.
A heading ended up alone at the bottom of a page.
Pages are cut at fixed intervals without regard for where content falls, so this happens occasionally. Inserting a blank line or two above the heading in your Markdown shifts the break, and a horizontal rule before a major section is a reliable way to control where a page turns.
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